The Paper Magician

He quirked an eyebrow, but his eyes still grinned, and the sentiment even reflected in the tilt of his lips. “I believe I’m well enough to make my own sandwich, Ceony.”


But she shook her head and pulled out the cutting board and the last of the cucumber from the icebox. Emery paused for a moment between dining room and kitchen before giving up and taking a chair.

“How do you feel?” Ceony asked, her pulse still thundering in her ears. It made her hands shake as she peeled and cut the cucumber. She forced herself to slow down so she wouldn’t slice open a finger.

“Like someone has been tromping around in my chest, looking at things they shouldn’t be looking at.”

Her knife froze mid-slice. She met his eyes and saw knowledge behind their amusement.

Her neck and ears burned. “Y-You know what happened, don’t you?”

He twisted a piece of hair around his finger. “It’s my heart, Ceony. Of course I would know what’s in it. Most of it, at least.”

Most of it? she thought, opening a cupboard door to block Emery’s view of her blushing face. She tried to focus on cutting the cucumber. How much is “most of it”?

She thought of their brief conversation from the fourth chamber and worried her clothes would ignite, her skin felt so hot.

The cupboard door shut, and Ceony jumped to see Emery beside her, taking the knife from her hand and setting it down on the countertop. “But I don’t know what happened before, or after,” he said. His eyes dropped to her neck. Reaching out a hand, he tilted her chin up with a knuckle. Ceony realized he was studying the faded bruises there, left by the fingers of one of Lira’s undead hands.

She pulled back and pushed her hair over her shoulders to mask them. “I stole your glider,” she said.

“Did you now?”

She nodded. “I sent out paper birds to scout and followed them. I think she—Lira—intended to escape on a boat—”

“But she didn’t.” It wasn’t a question. His eyes seemed determined, wondering.

Words spilled from her mouth. “I met her at the coast, in a cave. She put some sort of spell on you—on your heart—and that’s how I got stuck inside. I didn’t mean to ‘tromp.’ I had no choice.”

She found herself speaking faster with every sentence, unable to look away from those penetrating eyes. “And I thought if I could just make my way to the end I could get out. She was in there, too, somehow, but not always. I tried to go quickly. I didn’t want you to die.

“And then I got out,” she blurted, and he nodded. So he did remember that part. Ceony’s feet had gone cold for all the blood rushing to her face. “And she was there, and all the spells got wet and she grabbed me and said she’d take my heart, too, and—”

She stepped farther away from him, the small of her back hitting the rim of the sink. “I’m not like her, Emery. I didn’t mean . . . but it happened.”

His forehead wrinkled. “Didn’t mean what, Ceony? What happened?”

“We both ran for the dagger at the same time,” she explained, as though Emery would understand her story despite its lack of context. “I grabbed it first. I hurt her.” She touched her face where the blade had cut into Lira’s skin. “She bled everywhere. The paper . . . there was paper all over the rocks because of the spell you gave me. The bursting spell. And I wrote on them that she’d be frozen forever . . .”

A lump formed in Ceony’s throat, forcing her voice to grow quiet. She tried to swallow it down, but doing so only made it ache. “And it worked,” she whispered. “She’d still be there if they hadn’t come for her. I wrote it in blood and it worked . . .”

Tears clustered in the corners of her eyes, and she blinked rapidly to clear them. “I’m not like her,” she squeaked. “I’m not an Excisioner . . .”

Emery’s hand on her shoulder brought her gaze back to him. How silly she must have looked, must have sounded.

“No, you’re not,” he said, sounding much surer than she felt. “You’ve bonded to paper; you can’t be. It’s impossible.”

She stared at him, gaze moving from one green eye to the other. “But Lira—”

“Lira was not a magician when I met her,” he answered, pulling his hand away. “She was a nursing assistant, which explains why things like blood didn’t bother her. Don’t bother her.”

Ceony nodded slowly, feeling somewhat numb. “Then I’m not . . . I didn’t do the forbidden magic?”

“I don’t know what you did,” Emery replied, running a hand back through his hair. His eyes glanced out the window behind her for a moment. “But nothing illegal. Nothing that would ever hold in a court, if that’s what you’re worried about. You saved my life, Ceony, unless I’m dead and I greatly misjudged what the afterlife would look like.”

Ceony looked at her feet, hiding relief and a smile. “I’d be greatly upset if this were the afterlife and you were dead, Em—Magician Thane,” she said. “Because that would mean I flew clear to the ocean and back for nothing.”